Entry for January 17, 2007

"Sou iu koto desu."

That's just the way it is.

I went to high school and university in Japan. I did not attend preschool, elementary school, or most of junior high school here. High school was pretty lax and big on letting people do their own thing, as long as it did not go against the (comparatively lax) school rules.

University was a whole different story. I won't elaborate when and where and what I studied on this blog (although if you don't know me but really set your heart on stalking me, you probably could figure it out), but I'll just say that it was immensely speicalized and that people in the field are known to be somewhat conservative.

Japanese society has a lot of injustices. One of them is gender inequality. We are ranked lowest among industrialized nations for gender equality, and are ranked lower than some developing countries. I was kind of sheltered from this because my high school was all girls. University was 2/3 men.

Another injustice is seniority. No matter how moronic and downright annoying someone is, if he is older than you, he commands your respect. End of discussion, full stop, concluding statement, all that good stuff.

University is where I had this stuff shoved down my throat.

It's no secret I didn't enjoy it. But I appreciate that it was shoved down my throat, because if it didn't happen during university, it would have had to happen when I started working, and that would have been disasterous.

I'm not saying that I accept the situation as it is. What I mean is that the environment needs to be acknowleged, in a know your enemy kind of way, and then you can choose what to do with it. You can accept it, you can try to wiggle your way through it, you can work around it, or you can face it head on. I think I've adopted a wiggling and going-around approach to it, garnished with the occasional battles (I wish I could say that they were carefully picked battles, but the sad truth is that they are usually result of a flared temper).